“There are serious challenges when it comes to things like tubal ligation, IVF services, abortion, gender reassignment surgery, etc. None of these are allowed in Catholic-controlled hospitals around the world and it’s a puzzle as to why the nuns, or religious Sisters of Charity would want to be involved.

“I mean I can’t imagine them being comfortable with a hospital which is effectively under their control doing these sorts of things in one of their hospitals.”

- Dr Peter Boylan, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at the National Maternity Hospital and Chairman of Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

Former Labour TD Kathleen Lynch said that she couldn’t imagine maternity health – in all of the forms it takes – being performed in an institution owned by a religious order.

Lynch was in the department when the decision was made to build the new hospital, and said that a “new, modern state-of-the-art” maternity hospital was required but added that she was no longer sure that it would be delivered.

She said that there may be cases where a woman requires treatment that the Sisters of Charity are fundamentally opposed to, such as termination when a woman’s life is at risk.
She said that this would create problems for the treatment of women in the future when or if the owners of the hospital were to express its opposition to such procedures.
“I don’t accept that the ethos of Holles Street would be protected,” she said.

In an era when legislation and people’s expectations about their own lives are changing on a yearly basis, for instance: intersex, gender reassignment, IVF… Will all of those things be acceptable?
I really thought that we were beyond the point when the state builds a hospital and yet doesn’t own it. And if you don’t own your institution that you are delivering your national maternity services in and other people have an input – and who fundamentally disagree with some of the procedures – I think you are storing up problems

Kieran Mulvey, the former head of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), who retired last year, has been appointed as the chairman of Adare Human Resources Management, a Dublin consultancy.

The outspoken former civil servant, who ran the ASTI teachers’ union prior to leading the WRC and its predecessor the Labour Relations Commission, will join the company’s board, which also includes former Drury Communications managing director, Pádraig McKeon.

Mr Mulvey will also share his insider experience of the State’s industrial machinery directly with Adare’s clients at events, beginning with a training course at the Aviva Stadium at the end of the month.

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